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• Adventures In NAS

  1er janvier, par Multimedia Mike — General

  In my post last year about my out-of-control single-board computer (SBC) collection which included my meager network attached storage (NAS) solution, I noted that :

  I find that a lot of my fellow nerds massively overengineer their homelab NAS setups. I’ll explore this in a future post. For my part, people tend to find my homelab NAS solution slightly underengineered.

  So here I am, exploring this is a future post. I’ve been in the home NAS game a long time, but have never had very elaborate solutions for such. For my part, I tend to take an obsessively reductionist view of what constitutes a NAS : Any small computer with a pool of storage and a network connection, running the Linux operating system and the Samba file sharing service.

  
  
  

  Many home users prefer to buy turnkey boxes, usually that allow you to install hard drives yourself, and then configure the box and its services with a friendly UI. My fellow weird computer nerds often buy cast-off enterprise hardware and set up more resilient, over-engineered solutions, as long as they have strategies to mitigate the noise and dissipate the heat, and don’t mind the electricity bills.

  If it works, awesome ! As an old hand at this, I am rather stuck in my ways, however, preferring to do my own stunts, both with the hardware and software solutions.

  My History With Home NAS Setups
  In 1998, I bought myself a new computer — beige box tower PC, as was the style as the time. This was when normal people only had one computer at most. It ran Windows, but I was curious about this new thing called “Linux” and learned to dual boot that. Later that year, it dawned on me that nothing prevented me from buying a second ugly beige box PC and running Linux exclusively on it. Further, it could be a headless Linux box, connected by ethernet, and I could consolidate files into a single place using this file sharing software named Samba.
  

  I remember it being fairly onerous to get Samba working in those days. And the internet was not quite so helpful in those days. I recall that the thing that blocked me for awhile was needing to know that I had to specify an entry for the Samba server machine in the LMHOSTS (Lanman hosts) file on the Windows 95 machine.

  However, after I cracked that code, I have pretty much always had some kind of ad-hoc home NAS setup, often combined with a headless Linux development box.

  In the early 2000s, I built a new beige box PC for a file server, with a new hard disk, and a coworker tutored me on setting up a (P)ATA UDMA 133 (or was it 150 ? anyway, it was (P)ATA’s last hurrah before SATA conquered all) expansion card and I remember profiling that the attached hard drive worked at a full 21 MBytes/s reading. It was pretty slick. Except I hadn’t really thought things through. You see, I had a hand-me-down ethernet hub cast-off from my job at the time which I wanted to use. It was a 100 Mbps repeater hub, not a switch, so the catch was that all connected machines had to be capable of 100 Mbps. So, after getting all of my machines (3 at the time) upgraded to support 10/100 ethernet (the old off-brand PowerPC running Linux was the biggest challenge), I profiled transfers and realized that the best this repeater hub could achieve was about 3.6 MBytes/s. For a long time after that, I just assumed that was the upper limit of what a 100 Mbps network could achieve. Obviously, I now know that the upper limit ought to be around 11.2 MBytes/s and if I had gamed out that fact in advance, I would have realized it didn’t make sense to care about super-fast (for the time) disk performance.

  At this time, I was doing a lot for development for MPlayer/xine/FFmpeg. I stored all of my multimedia material on this NAS. I remember being confused when I was working with Y4M data, which is raw frames, which is lots of data. xine, which employed a pre-buffering strategy, would play fine for a few seconds and then stutter. Eventually, I reasoned out that the files I was working with had a data rate about twice what my awful repeater hub supported, which is probably the first time I came to really understand and respect streaming speeds and their implications for multimedia playback.

  Smaller Solutions
  For a period, I didn’t have a NAS. Then I got an Apple AirPort Extreme, which I noticed had a USB port. So I bought a dual drive brick to plug into it and used that for a time. Later (2009), I had this thing called the MSI Wind Nettop which is the only PC I’ve ever seen that can use a CompactFlash (CF) card for a boot drive. So I did just that, and installed a large drive so it could function as a NAS, as well as a headless dev box. I’m still amazed at what a low-power I/O beast this thing is, at least when compared to all the ARM SoCs I have tried in the intervening 1.5 decades. I’ve had spinning hard drives in this thing that could read at 160 MBytes/s (‘dd’ method) and have no trouble saturating the gigabit link at 112 MBytes/s, all with its early Intel Atom CPU.

  Around 2015, I wanted a more capable headless dev box and discovered Intel’s line of NUCs. I got one of the fat models that can hold a conventional 2.5″ spinning drive in addition to the M.2 SATA SSD and I was off and running. That served me fine for a few years, until I got into the ARM SBC scene. One major limitation here is that 2.5″ drives aren’t available in nearly the capacities that make a NAS solution attractive.

  Current Solution
  My current NAS solution, chronicled in my last SBC post– the ODroid-HC2, which is a highly compact ARM SoC with an integrated USB3-SATA bridge so that a SATA drive can be connected directly to it :

  
  

  

  ODROID-HC2 NAS

  
  

  I tend to be weirdly proficient at recalling dates, so I’m surprised that I can’t recall when I ordered this and put it into service. But I’m pretty sure it was circa 2018. It’s only equipped with an 8 TB drive now, but I seem to recall that it started out with only a 4 TB drive. I think I upgraded to the 8 TB drive early in the pandemic in 2020, when ISPs were implementing temporary data cap amnesty and I was doing what a r/DataHoarder does.

  The HC2 has served me well, even though it has a number of shortcomings for a hardware set chartered for NAS :

  1. While it has a gigabit ethernet port, it’s documented that it never really exceeds about 70 MBytes/s, due to the SoC’s limitations
  2. The specific ARM chip (Samsung Exynos 5422 ; more than a decade old as of this writing) lacks cryptography instructions, slowing down encryption if that’s your thing (e.g., LUKS)
  3. While the SoC supports USB3, that block is tied up for the SATA interface ; the remaining USB port is only capable of USB2 speeds
  4. 32-bit ARM, which prevented me from running certain bits of software I wanted to try (like Minio)
  5. Only 1 drive, so no possibility for RAID (again, if that’s your thing)

  I also love to brag on the HC2’s power usage : I once profiled the unit for a month using a Kill-A-Watt and under normal usage (with the drive spinning only when in active use). The unit consumed 4.5 kWh… in an entire month.

  New Solution
  Enter the ODroid-HC4 (I purchased mine from Ameridroid but Hardkernel works with numerous distributors) :

  
  

  

  ODroid-HC4 with an SSD and a conventional drive

  
  

  I ordered this earlier in the year and after many months of procrastinating and obsessing over the best approach to take with its general usage, I finally have it in service as my new NAS. Comparing point by point with the HC2 :

  1. The gigabit ethernet runs at full speed (though a few things on my network run at 2.5 GbE now, so I guess I’ll always be behind)
  2. The ARM chip (Amlogic S905X3) has AES cryptography acceleration and handles all the LUKS stuff without breaking a sweat ; “cryptsetup benchmark” reports between 500-600 MBytes/s on all the AES variants
  3. The USB port is still only USB2, so no improvement there
  4. 64-bit ARM, which means I can run Minio to simulate block storage in a local dev environment for some larger projects I would like to undertake
  5. Supports 2 drives, if RAID is your thing

  How I Set It Up
  How to set up the drive configuration ? As should be apparent from the photo above, I elected for an SSD (500 GB) for speed, paired with a conventional spinning HDD (18 TB) for sheer capacity. I’m not particularly trusting of RAID. I’ve watched it fail too many times, on systems that I don’t even manage, not to mention that aforementioned RAID brick that I had attached to the Apple AirPort Extreme.

  I had long been planning to use bcache, the block caching interface for Linux, which can use the SSD as a speedy cache in front of the more capacious disk. There is also LVM cache, which is supposed to achieve something similar. And then I had to evaluate the trade-offs in whether I wanted write-back, write-through, or write-around configurations.

  This was all predicated on the assumption that the spinning drive would not be able to saturate the gigabit connection. When I got around to setting up the hardware and trying some basic tests, I found that the conventional HDD had no trouble keeping up with the gigabit data rate, both reading and writing, somewhat obviating the need for SSD acceleration using any elaborate caching mechanisms.

  Maybe that’s because I sprung for the WD Red Pro series this time, rather than the Red Plus ? I’m guessing that conventional drives do deteriorate over the years. I’ll find out.

  For the operating system, I stuck with my newest favorite Linux distro : DietPi. While HardKernel (parent of ODroid) makes images for the HC units, I had also used DietPi for the HC2 for the past few years, as it tends to stay more up to date.

  Then I rsync’d my data from HC2 -> HC4. It was only about 6.5 TB of total data but it took days as this WD Red Plus drive is only capable of reading at around 10 MBytes/s these days. Painful.

  For file sharing, I’m pretty sure most normal folks have nice web UIs in their NAS boxes which allow them to easily configure and monitor the shares. I know there are such applications I could set up. But I’ve been doing this so long, I just do a bare bones setup through the terminal. I installed regular Samba and then brought over my smb.conf file from the HC2. 1 by 1, I tested that each of the old shares were activated on the new NAS and deactivated on the old NAS. I also set up a new share for the SSD. I guess that will just serve as a fast I/O scratch space on the NAS.

  The conventional drive spins up and down. That’s annoying when I’m actively working on something but manage not to hit the drive for like 5 minutes and then an application blocks while the drive wakes up. I suppose I could set it up so that it is always running. However, I micro-manage this with a custom bash script I wrote a long time ago which logs into the NAS and runs the “date” command every 2 minutes, appending the output to a file. As a bonus, it also prints data rate up/down stats every 5 seconds. The spinning file (“nas-main/zz-keep-spinning/keep-spinning.txt”) has never been cleared and has nearly a quarter million lines. I suppose that implies that it has kept the drive spinning for 1/2 million minutes which works out to around 347 total days. I should compare that against the drive’s SMART stats, if I can remember how. The earliest timestamp in the file is from March 2018, so I know the HC2 NAS has been in service at least that long.

  For tasks, vintage cron still does everything I could need. In this case, that means reaching out to websites (like this one) and automatically backing up static files.

  I also have to have a special script for starting up. Fortunately, I was able to bring this over from the HC2 and tweak it. The data disks (though not boot disk) are encrypted. Those need to be unlocked and only then is it safe for the Samba and Minio services to start up. So one script does all that heavy lifting in the rare case of a reboot (this is the type of system that’s well worth having on a reliable UPS).

  Further Work
  I need to figure out how to use the OLED display on the NAS, and how to make it show something more useful than the current time and date, which is what it does in its default configuration with HardKernel’s own Linux distro. With DietPi, it does nothing by default. I’m thinking it should be able to show the percent usage of each of the 2 drives, at a minimum.

  I also need to establish a more responsible backup regimen. I’m way too lazy about this. Fortunately, I reason that I can keep the original HC2 in service, repurposed to accept backups from the main NAS. Again, I’m sort of micro-managing this since a huge amount of data isn’t worth backing up (remember the whole DataHoarder bit), but the most important stuff will be shipped off.

  The post Adventures In NAS first appeared on Breaking Eggs And Making Omelettes.

• Strategies for Reducing Bank Customer Acquisition Cost [2024]

  24 septembre 2024, par Daniel Crough — Banking and Financial Services

  Acquiring new customers is no small feat — regardless of the size of your team. The expenses of various marketing efforts tend to pile up fast, even more so when your business operates in a highly competitive industry like banking. At the same time, marketing budgets continue to decrease — dropping from an average of 9.1% of total company revenue in 2023 down to 7.7% in 2024 — prompting businesses in the financial services industry to figure out how they can do more with less.

  That brings us to bank customer acquisition cost (CAC) — a key business metric that can reveal quite a bit about your bank’s long-term profitability and potential for achieving sustainable growth. 

  This article will cover the ins and outs of bank customer acquisition costs and share actionable tips and strategies you can implement to reduce CAC.

  What is customer acquisition cost in banking ? 

  

  The global market volume of neobanks — fintech companies and digital banking platforms, often referred to as “challenger banks” — was estimated at $4.96 trillion in 2023. It’s expected to continue growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.15% in the coming years, potentially reaching $10.44 trillion by 2028.

  That’s enough of an indicator that the financial services industry is now a highly competitive landscape where companies are often competing for the attention of a relatively limited audience. 

  Plus, several app-only banks based in Europe have made significant progress in attracting new customers to their financial products : 

  

  Unsurprisingly, this flurry of competition is putting upward pressure on customer acquisition and retention costs across the banking sector.

  Customer acquisition cost (CAC) — the sum of all costs and resources related to acquiring an additional customer — is one of the key business metrics to keep an eye on when trying to maximise your return on investment (ROI) and profitability, especially if your company operates in the banking industry.

  Here’s the basic formula you can use to calculate the cost of acquisition in banking : 

  Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) = Total Amount Spent (TS) / Total New Customers Acquired (TNC)

  In essence, it requires you to divide the total cost of acquiring consumers — including sales and marketing expenses — by the total number of new customers your company has gained within a specific timeframe.

  There’s one thing you need to keep in mind : 

  The customer acquisition process involves more than just your marketing and sales departments. 

  While marketing and sales channels play a crucial role in this process, the list of expenses that may contribute to customer acquisition costs in banking goes well beyond that. 

  Here’s a quick breakdown of the customer acquisition cost formula to show you which costs make up the total amount spent : 

  • All advertising and marketing costs, including traditional (direct mail, billboards, TV and print advertising) and digital channels (email, Google ads, social media and influencer marketing)
  • Cost of outsourced marketing services, including any independent contractors involved in the process 
  • Salaries and commissions for the marketing team and sales representatives
  • Software subscriptions, including marketing software and web analytics tools 
  • Other overhead and operational costs 

  And until you’ve taken all these expenses into account, you won’t be able to accurately estimate how much it actually costs you to attract potential customers.

  Another thing to keep in mind is that there’s no universal definition of “good CAC.” 

  The average customer acquisition cost varies across different industries and business models. That said, you can generally expect a higher-than-average CAC in highly competitive sectors — namely, the financial, manufacturing and real estate industries. 

  Importance of tracking customer acquisition cost in banking 

  

  Customer acquisition costs are an important indicator of a banking business’s potential growth and profitability. Monitoring this fundamental business metric can provide data-driven insights about your current bank customer acquisition strategy — and offers a few notable benefits : 

  • Measuring the performance and effectiveness of different channels and campaigns and making data-driven decisions regarding future marketing efforts
  • Improving return on investment (ROI) by determining the most effective strategies for acquiring new customers 
  • Improving profitability by assessing the value per customer and improving profit margins 
  • Benchmarking against industry competitors to see where your business’s CAC stands compared to the banking industry average

  At the risk of stating the obvious, acquiring new customers isn’t always easy. That’s true for many highly competitive industries — especially the banking sector, which is currently witnessing the rapid rise of digital disruptors. 

  Case in point, the fintech market alone is currently valued at $312.98 billion and is expected to reach $556.70 billion by 2030, following a CAGR of 14%.

  

  However, strong competition is only one of the challenges banks face throughout the process of attracting potential customers. 

  Here are a few other things to keep in mind : 

  • Ethical business practices and strict compliance requirements when it comes to the privacy and security of customer data, including meeting data protection standards and ensuring regulatory compliance
  • Lack of personalisation throughout the customer journey, which today’s customers view as a lack of understanding of — and even interest in — their needs and preferences 
  • Limited mobile banking capabilities, which further points to a failure to innovate and adapt — one of the leading risks that financial services may face 

  7 strategies for reducing bank customer acquisition costs 

  

  When working on optimising your banking customer acquisition strategy, the key thing to keep in mind is that there are two sides to improving CAC : 

  On the one hand, you have efforts to decrease the costs associated with acquiring a new customer — and on the other, you have the importance of attracting high-value customers. 

  1. Eliminate friction points in the customer onboarding process

  One of the first things financial institutions should do is examine their existing digital onboarding process and look for friction points that might cause potential customers to drop off. After all, a streamlined onboarding process will minimise barriers to conversion, increasing the number of new customers acquired and improving overall customer satisfaction. 

  Keep in mind that, at the 30-day mark, finance mobile apps have an average user retention rate of 3% : 

  

  That says a lot about the importance of providing a frictionless onboarding experience as a retail bank or any other financial institution. 

  Granted, a single point of friction is rarely enough to cause customers to churn. It’s typically a combination of several factors — a lengthy sign-up process with complicated password requirements and time-consuming customer identification or poor customer service, for example — that occur during the key moments of the customer journey.

  In order to keep tabs on customer experiences across different touchpoints and spot potential barriers in their journey, you’ll need a reliable source of data. Matomo’s Funnels report can show you exactly where your website visitors are dropping off. 

  2. Get more personalised with your marketing efforts 

  Generic experiences are rarely the way to go — especially when you’re contending for the attention of prospective customers in such a competitive sector. 

  Besides, 62% of people who made an online purchase within the last six months have said that brands would lose their loyalty following a non-personalised experience. 

  What’s more shocking is that only a year earlier, that number stood at 45%.

  

  When it comes to improving marketing efficiency and sales strategies, 94% of marketers agree that personalisation is key : 

  

  It’s evident that personalised marketing supported by behavioural segmentation can significantly improve conversion rates — and, most importantly, reduce acquisition costs. 

  Of course, it’s virtually impossible to deliver targeted, personalised marketing messaging without creating audience segments and detailed buyer personas. Matomo’s Segmentation feature can help by allowing you to split website visitors into smaller groups and get much-needed insights for behavioural segmentation. 

  3. Build an omnichannel marketing strategy 

  Customer expectations, behaviours and preferences are constantly evolving, making it crucial for financial services to adapt their customer acquisition strategies accordingly. Meeting prospective customers on their preferred channels is a big part of that. 

  The issue is that modern banking customers tend to move across different channels. That’s one of the reasons why it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to deliver a unified experience throughout the entire customer journey and close the gap between digital and in-person customer interactions. 

  Omnichannel marketing gives you a way to keep up with customers’ ever-evolving expectations :

  Adopting this marketing strategy will allow you to meet customers where they are and deliver a seamless experience across a wide range of digital channels and touchpoints, leading to more exposure — and, ultimately, increasing the number of acquired customers.

  Matomo can support your omnichannel efforts by providing accurate, unsampled data needed for cross-channel analytics and marketing attribution. 

  4. Work on your social media presence 

  Social networks are among the most popular — and successful — digital marketing channels, with millions (even billions, depending on the platform) of active users. 

  In fact, 89% of marketers report using Facebook as their main platform for social media marketing, while another 80% use Instagram to reach their target audience and promote their business. 

  

  And according to The State of Social Media in Banking 2023 report, nine out of ten banks (89%) consider social media is important, while another 88% are active on their social media accounts. 

  That is to say, even traditionally conservative industries — like banking and finance — realise the crucial role of social media in promoting their services and engaging with customers on their preferred channels : 

  It’s an excellent way for businesses in the financial sector to gain exposure, drive traffic to their website and acquire new customers. 

  If you’re ready to improve social media visibility as part of your multichannel efforts, Matomo can help you track social media activity across 70 different platforms. 

  5. Shift the focus on customer loyalty and retention 

  Up until this point, the focus has mainly been on building new business relationships. However, one thing to keep in mind is that retaining existing customers is generally cheaper than investing in customer acquisition activities to attract new ones. 

  Of course, customer retention won’t directly impact your CAC. But what it can do is increase customer lifetime value, contributing to your company’s revenue and profits — which, in turn, can “balance out” your acquisition costs in the long run.

  That’s not to say that you should stop trying to bring in new clients ; far from it. 

  However, focusing on increasing customer loyalty — namely, delivering excellent customer service and building lasting business relationships — could motivate satisfied customers to become brand advocates. 

  As this survey of customer satisfaction for leading banks in the UK has shown, when clients are satisfied with a bank’s products and services, they’re more likely to recommend it. 

  

  Positive word-of-mouth recommendations can be a powerful way to drive customer acquisition. You can leverage that by launching a customer referral program and incentivising loyal customers to refer new ones to your business. 

  6. A/B test different elements to find ones that work 

  We’ve already underlined the importance of understanding your audience ; it’s the foundation for optimising the customer journey and delivering targeted marketing efforts that will attract more customers. 

  Another proven method that can be used to refine your customer acquisition strategy is A/B or split testing. 

  It involves testing different versions of specific elements of your marketing content — such as language, CTAs and visuals — to determine the most effective combinations that resonate with your target audience. 

  Besides your marketing campaigns, you can also split test different variants of your website or mobile app to see which version gets them to convert. 

  Matomo’s A/B Testing feature can be of huge help here : 

  

  7. Track other relevant customer acquisition metrics 

  To better assess your company’s profitability, you’ll have to go beyond CAC and factor in other critical metrics — namely, customer lifetime value (CLTV), churn rate and return on investment (ROI). 

  Here are the most important KPIs you should monitor in addition to CAC : 

  • Customer lifetime value (CLTV), which represents the revenue generated by a single customer throughout the duration of their relationship with your company and is another crucial indicator of customer profitability 
  • Churn rate — the rate at which your company loses clients within a given timeframe — can indicate how well you’re retaining customers 
  • Return on investment (ROI) — the revenue generated by new clients compared to the initial costs of acquiring them — can help you identify the most effective customer acquisition channels 

  These metrics work hand in hand. There needs to be a balance between the revenue the customer generates over their lifetime and the costs related to attracting them.

  Ideally, you should be aiming for lower CAC and customer churn and higher CLTV ; that’s usually a solid indicator of financial health and sustainable growth. 

  Lower bank customer acquisition costs with Matomo 

  Acquiring new customers will require a lot of time and resources, regardless of the industry you’re working in — but can be even more challenging in the financial sector, where you have to adapt to the ever-changing customer expectations and demands. 

  The strategies outlined above — combined with a thorough understanding of your customer’s behaviours and preferences — can help you lower the cost of bank customer acquisition.

  On that note, you can learn a lot about your customers through web analytics — and use those insights to support your customer acquisition process and ensure you’re delivering a seamless online banking experience. 

  If you need an alternative to Google Analytics that doesn’t rely on data sampling and ensures compliance with the strictest privacy regulations, all while being easy to use, choose Matomo — the go-to web analytics platform for more than 1 million websites around the globe. 

  CTA : Start your 21-day free trial today to see how Matomo’s all-in-one solution can help you understand and attract new customers — all while respecting their privacy. 

• audio extracted from flv file via ffmpeg is of shorter duration than the actual flv video [closed]

  11 janvier 2013, par user1961143

  I have extracted audio from flv file via ffmpeg using this command :-

  ffmpeg -i 164_29.flv v19.mp3

  The flv videos duration is 3 minutes but the audio is of 2 mins 20 seconds only. On searching i found that the silent pieces of audio are removed when generating audio from ffmpeg. But i need the audio file to be of exactly same duration as flv video as later i need to put this audio in the flv video itself. Please help as this is urgent for our project. I am running the FFMpeg via .net windows service, so in case you know any other tool which can extract the audio of same duration as video and can be run via .net, it would be useful too.

  Console output :

  C :\Users\ritika.thakur>ffmpeg -i 164_29.flv v19.mp3
  ffmpeg version N-47062-g26c531c Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Nov 25 2012 12:23:20 with gcc 4.7.2 (GCC)
  configuration : —disable-static —enable-shared —enable-gpl —enable-version —disable-pthreads —enable-runtime-cpudetect —enable-avisynth —enable-bzlib —enable-frei0r —enable-libass —enable-libopencore-amrnb —enable-libopencore-amrwb —enable-libfreetype —enable-libgsm —enable-libmp3lame —enable-libnut -enable-libopenjpeg —enable-libopus —enable-librtmp —enable-libschroedinger -enable-libspeex —enable-libtheora —enable-libutvideo —enable-libvo-aacenc —enable-libvo-amrwbenc —enable-libvorbis —enable-libvpx —enable-libx264 —enale-libxavs —enable-libxvid —enable-zlib
  libavutil 52. 9.100 / 52. 9.100
  libavcodec 54. 77.100 / 54. 77.100
  libavformat 54. 37.100 / 54. 37.100
  libavdevice 54. 3.100 / 54. 3.100
  libavfilter 3. 23.102 / 3. 23.102
  libswscale 2. 1.102 / 2. 1.102
  libswresample 0. 17.101 / 0. 17.101
  libpostproc 52. 2.100 / 52. 2.100
  Input #0, flv, from '164_29.flv' :
  Metadata :
  canSeekToEnd : false
  createdby : FMS 4.0
  creationdate : Tue Jan 08 00:26:19 2013
  Duration : 00:03:04.08, start : 0.000000, bitrate : 283
  kb/s
  Stream #0:0 : Video : flv1, yuv420p, 320x240, 1k tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc
  Stream #0:1 : Audio : nellymoser, 22050 Hz, mono, flt
  Output #0, mp3, to 'v19.mp3' :
  Metadata :
  canSeekToEnd : false
  createdby : FMS 4.0
  creationdate : Tue Jan 08 00:26:19 2013
  TSSE : Lavf54.37.100
  Stream #0:0 : Audio : mp3, 22050 Hz, mono, fltp
  Stream mapping :
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:0 (nellymoser -> libmp3lame)
  Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
  size= 567kB time=00:03:04.13 bitrate= 25.2kbits/s video:0kB audio:567kB subtitle:0 global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.051503%

  This is the output of console for both video and audio file separately :-

  Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
  Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

  C :\Users\ritika.thakur>ffmpeg -i v19.mp3

  ffmpeg version N-47062-g26c531c Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Nov 25 2012 12:23:20 with gcc 4.7.2 (GCC)
  configuration : —disable-static —enable-shared —enable-gpl —enable-version3
  —disable-pthreads —enable-runtime-cpudetect —enable-avisynth —enable-bzlib
  — enable-frei0r —enable-libass —enable-libopencore-amrnb —enable-libopencore-
  amrwb —enable-libfreetype —enable-libgsm —enable-libmp3lame —enable-libnut -
   enable-libopenjpeg —enable-libopus —enable-librtmp —enable-libschroedinger -
   enable-libspeex —enable-libtheora —enable-libutvideo —enable-libvo-aacenc —
  enable-libvo-amrwbenc —enable-libvorbis —enable-libvpx —enable-libx264 —enab
  le-libxavs —enable-libxvid —enable-zlib
  libavutil 52. 9.100 / 52. 9.100
  libavcodec 54. 77.100 / 54. 77.100
  libavformat 54. 37.100 / 54. 37.100
  libavdevice 54. 3.100 / 54. 3.100
  libavfilter 3. 23.102 / 3. 23.102
  libswscale 2. 1.102 / 2. 1.102
  libswresample 0. 17.101 / 0. 17.101
  libpostproc 52. 2.100 / 52. 2.100
  [mp3 @ 0056e780] max_analyze_duration 5000000 reached at 5015510
  Input #0, mp3, from 'v19.mp3' :
  Metadata :
  canSeekToEnd : false
  createdby : FMS 4.0
  creationdate : Tue Jan 08 00:26:19 2013
  encoder : Lavf54.37.100
  Duration : 00:02:25.14, start : 0.000000, bitrate : 32 kb/s
  Stream #0:0 : Audio : mp3, 22050 Hz, mono, s16, 32 kb/s
  At least one output file must be specified

  C :\Users\ritika.thakur>ffmpeg -i 164_29.flv

  ffmpeg version N-47062-g26c531c Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Nov 25 2012 12:23:20 with gcc 4.7.2 (GCC)
  configuration : —disable-static —enable-shared —enable-gpl —enable-version3
  —disable-pthreads —enable-runtime-cpudetect —enable-avisynth —enable-bzlib
  — enable-frei0r —enable-libass —enable-libopencore-amrnb —enable-libopencore-
  amrwb —enable-libfreetype —enable-libgsm —enable-libmp3lame —enable-libnut -
   enable-libopenjpeg —enable-libopus —enable-librtmp —enable-libschroedinger -
   enable-libspeex —enable-libtheora —enable-libutvideo —enable-libvo-aacenc —
  enable-libvo-amrwbenc —enable-libvorbis —enable-libvpx —enable-libx264 —enab
  le-libxavs —enable-libxvid —enable-zlib
  libavutil 52. 9.100 / 52. 9.100
  libavcodec 54. 77.100 / 54. 77.100
  libavformat 54. 37.100 / 54. 37.100
  libavdevice 54. 3.100 / 54. 3.100
  libavfilter 3. 23.102 / 3. 23.102
  libswscale 2. 1.102 / 2. 1.102
  libswresample 0. 17.101 / 0. 17.101
  libpostproc 52. 2.100 / 52. 2.100
  Input #0, flv, from '164_29.flv' :
  Metadata :
  canSeekToEnd : false
  createdby : FMS 4.0
  creationdate : Tue Jan 08 00:26:19 2013
  Duration : 00:03:04.08, start : 0.000000, bitrate : 283 kb/s
  Stream #0:0 : Video : flv1, yuv420p, 320x240, 1k tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc
  Stream #0:1 : Audio : nellymoser, 22050 Hz, mono, flt
  At least one output file must be specified

  If you see the duration of video is of 3:04 but audio extracted from it is of 2:25 only.
  Actually i am using ffmpeg overlay to show two videos side by side in our debate project for the client. Now ffmpeg takes audio from first video by default. But we want the audio from both videos together as a debate going on. Hence I thought of a solution to extract audio from both videos and merge them and than apply them to the overlayed video. This will all work perfectly only if I get the complete audio from the video file i.e. of equal duration.
  For more information i am writing here the overlay command we are using :-

   **ffmpeg -i 164_29.flv  -vf "[in] scale=359:320, pad=2*iw+6:ih
  
    [left];    movie=164_30.flv, scale=359:320 [right]; [left][right] 
  
    overlay=365:0  [out]" -b:v 3600k -y a1.flv**
  
  
  
   **This is the console output of this overlay command:-**

  C :\Users\ritika.thakur>ffmpeg -i 164_29.flv -vf "[in] scale=359:320, pad=2*iw+6
  :ih [left] ; movie=164_30.flv, scale=359:320 [right] ; [left][right] overlay=365:0
  [out]" -b:v 3600k -y a1.flv
  ffmpeg version N-47062-g26c531c Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Nov 25 2012 12:23:20 with gcc 4.7.2 (GCC)
  configuration : —disable-static —enable-shared —enable-gpl —enable-version3
  —disable- pthreads —enable-runtime-cpudetect —enable- avisynth
  —enable-bzlib —enable
  -frei0r
  —enable-libass —enable-libopencore-amrnb —enable-libopencore-amrwb
  —enable- libfreetype —enable-libgsm —enable-libmp3lame —enable-libnut
  —enable-libopenjpeg —enable-libopus —enable-librtmp —enable-libschroedinger
  — enable-
  libspeex —enable-libtheora —enable- libutvideo
  —enable-libvo-aacenc —
  enable-libvo-amrwbenc —enable-libvorbis —enable-libvpx
  —enable-libx264 —enab
  le-libxavs —enable-libxvid —enable-zlib
  libavutil 52. 9.100 / 52. 9.100
  libavcodec 54. 77.100 / 54. 77.100
  libavformat 54. 37.100 / 54. 37.100
  libavdevice 54. 3.100 / 54. 3.100
  libavfilter 3. 23.102 / 3. 23.102
  libswscale 2. 1.102 / 2. 1.102
  libswresample 0. 17.101 / 0. 17.101
  libpostproc 52. 2.100 / 52. 2.100
  Input #0, flv, from '164_29.flv' :
  Metadata :
  canSeekToEnd : false
  createdby : FMS 4.0
  creationdate : Tue Jan 08 00:26:19 2013
  Duration : 00:03:04.08, start : 0.000000, bitrate : 283 kb/s
  Stream #0:0 : Video : flv1, yuv420p, 320x240, 1k tbr, 1k tbn, 1k tbc
  Stream #0:1 : Audio : nellymoser, 22050 Hz, mono, flt
  Output #0, flv, to 'a1.flv' :
  Metadata :
  canSeekToEnd : false
  createdby : FMS 4.0
  creationdate : Tue Jan 08 00:26:19 2013
  encoder : Lavf54.37.100
  Stream #0:0 : Video : flv1 ([2][0][0][0] / 0x0002), yuv420p, 724x320, q=2-31,
  3600 kb/s, 1k tbn, 1k tbc
  Stream #0:1 : Audio : mp3 ([2][0][0][0] / 0x0002), 22050 Hz, mono, fltp
  Stream mapping :
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (flv -> flv)
  Stream #0:1 -> #0:1 (nellymoser -> libmp3lame)
  Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
  frame= 83 fps=0.0 q=4.1 size= 343kB time=00:00:07.01 bitrate= 401.2kbits/s
  frame= 149 fps=149 q=2.3 size= 861kB time=00:00:14.87 bitrate= 473.9kbits/s
  frame= 223 fps=148 q=2.0 size= 1492kB time=00:00:22.00 bitrate= 555.4kbits/s
  frame= 308 fps=153 q=2.0 size= 2195kB time=00:00:28.64 bitrate= 627.8kbits/s
  frame= 391 fps=156 q=2.0 size= 2858kB time=00:00:34.06 bitrate= 687.4kbits/s
  frame= 478 fps=159 q=2.0 size= 3541kB time=00:00:39.55 bitrate= 733.4kbits/s
  frame= 547 fps=156 q=2.0 size= 4293kB time=00:00:46.80 bitrate= 751.5kbits/s
  frame= 645 fps=161 q=2.0 size= 4896kB time=00:00:51.63 bitrate= 776.8kbits/s
  Buffer queue overflow, dropping.
  [Parsed_overlay_4 @ 0152ca80] Buffer queue overflow, dropping.
  Last message repeated 16 times
  frame= 731 fps=162 q=2.0 size= 5418kB time=00:00:56.61 bitrate= 784.0kbits/s
  Buffer queue overflow, dropping.
  [Parsed_overlay_4 @ 0152ca80] Buffer queue overflow, dropping.
  Last message repeated 49 times
  frame= 794 fps=158 q=2.0 size= 5802kB time=00:01:02.37 bitrate= 762.1kbits/s
  frame= 886 fps=160 q=2.0 size= 6363kB time=00:01:07.00 bitrate= 778.0kbits/s
  Buffer queue overflow, dropping.
  [Parsed_overlay_4 @ 0152ca80] Buffer queue overflow, dropping.
  Last message repeated 29 times
  frame= 954 fps=158 q=2.0 size= 6785kB time=00:01:13.31 bitrate= 758.2kbits/s
  frame= 1056 fps=162 q=2.0 size= 7377kB time=00:01:16.94 bitrate= 785.4kbits/s
  Buffer queue overflow, dropping.
  [Parsed_overlay_4 @ 0152ca80] Buffer queue overflow, dropping.
  Last message repeated 30 times
  frame= 1130 fps=161 q=2.0 size= 7789kB time=00:01:22.19 bitrate= 776.3kbits/s
  frame= 1217 fps=162 q=2.0 size= 8372kB time=00:01:27.68 bitrate= 782.1kbits/s
  frame= 1306 fps=163 q=2.0 size= 9074kB time=00:01:32.86 bitrate= 800.5kbits/s
  frame= 1393 fps=163 q=1.6 size= 9700kB time=00:01:38.41 bitrate= 807.3kbits/s
  frame= 1475 fps=163 q=2.0 size= 10278kB time=00:01:44.03 bitrate= 809.4kbits/s
  frame= 1568 fps=164 q=2.0 size= 10825kB time=00:01:48.52 bitrate= 817.1kbits/s
  frame= 1658 fps=165 q=2.0 size= 11439kB time=00:01:53.44 bitrate= 826.0kbits/s
  frame= 1734 fps=165 q=2.0 size= 12027kB time=00:01:58.31 bitrate= 832.7kbits/s
  frame= 1792 fps=162 q=2.0 size= 12579kB time=00:02:03.41 bitrate= 835.0kbits/s
  frame= 1851 fps=160 q=2.0 size= 13284kB time=00:02:10.74 bitrate= 832.3kbits/s
  frame= 1929 fps=160 q=2.0 size= 13922kB time=00:02:16.85 bitrate= 833.3kbits/s
  frame= 2010 fps=160 q=2.0 size= 14652kB time=00:02:23.39 bitrate= 837.1kbits/s
  frame= 2102 fps=161 q=2.0 size= 15329kB time=00:02:28.86 bitrate= 843.6kbits/s
  frame= 2200 fps=162 q=2.0 size= 15963kB time=00:02:34.08 bitrate= 848.7kbits/s
  frame= 2292 fps=163 q=2.0 size= 16554kB time=00:02:38.96 bitrate= 853.1kbits/s
  frame= 2378 fps=163 q=2.0 size= 17157kB time=00:02:44.50 bitrate= 854.4kbits/s
  frame= 2468 fps=164 q=2.0 size= 17826kB time=00:02:49.50 bitrate= 861.5kbits/s
  frame= 2564 fps=165 q=2.0 size= 18489kB time=00:02:54.43 bitrate= 868.3kbits/s
  Buffer queue overflow, dropping.
  [Parsed_overlay_4 @ 0152ca80] Buffer queue overflow, dropping.
  Last message repeated 15 times
  frame= 2647 fps=165 q=2.0 size= 19079kB time=00:02:59.53 bitrate= 870.6kbits/s
  frame= 2728 fps=165 q=2.0 Lsize= 19703kB time=00:03:04.13 bitrate= 876.6kbits/
  s video:19006kB audio:567kB subtitle:0 global headers:0kB muxing overhead 0.663315%

  Everything is working fine except that we want audio from both videos playing together in final overlayed file. I would be highly grateful if you can help in this and let me know if its possible to do via ffmpeg or not.